QOTW: Which PC components are you looking to upgrade in 2018?

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New year, new build?

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Read more.

GPU i need a gpu so badly. i think ill keep 1080p till 2020.

Well I was contemplating a new systen build, given that my last one is about 10 years old, but frankly, given this "CPU flaw" fiasco, I'm very disinclined to buy into knowingly faulty hardware.

There's nothing actually wrong with the existing system, though the 4GB DDR2 is hardly optimal. Still, it gets the job done so having waited this long, another 6, 12, 'whatever' months won't hurt.

So I think, for now at least, I shall continue my current close and affectionate relationship with my money and leave it right where it is, 'til CPU manufacturers can actually get their <bleep> together.

Looking at a whole system build, see what Zen+/Ryzen 2000 is like before deciding what way to go though.

Monitor unfortunately. I have to sit here for 3 or 4 minutes (although feels like 10) waving the mouse around looking like a plum trying to convince it to turn on.

Done me a good 10 years though. Don't want to scrimp on a replacement, however never seem to have enough coin in pocket :(

TBH, I'd love to get a new Ryzen system , common sense dictated a 1600 as the one. I'm still running a Phenom11 X4 965 black edition with 8MB ram as my main PC.Don't get me wrong , this has served me brilliantly for years now , stable and doe's what I need well fast enough but time for an upgrade I'm thinking. Main thing that is stopping me is the damn cost of DDR4 , I refuse to pay these scandalous prices , takes the idea out of my pocket. I can accept CPU and motherboard prices but until DDR4 comes down to affordable , sensible prices I'm out of the boardgame.

I have been thinking of adding 16GB of ram to my pc but at the rate of increase in price on ddr3 it will likely be cheaper for me to buy a whole new pc by the end of the year... In hindsight should have grabbed it beginning of last year but thought price would come back to where it was when I bought but it's only gone up since, luckily I can manage on 16GB for now.

Other than that it's upgrading peripherals like getting a better 3DConnexion device, upgrading my wireless bridge to AC rather than N and maybe looking at a larger nas.

Desk and Chair! Not technically PC components, but very important components to PC use!

Was also thinking a system upgrade but I may just hang on. I may give in but it would be Ryzen(2) if I do. Upgraded my SSD space, monitor and GPU in 17 though so it's fine at the mo.

Mind you an upgrade will only happen if DDR4 prices come down because I don't really need to.

Need isn't necessarily a prerequsite though and I may just wait for new architectures and DDR5 :)

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Originally Posted by mers

TBH, I'd love to get a new Ryzen system , common sense dictated a 1600 as the one. I'm still running a Phenom11 X4 965 black edition with 8MB ram as my main PC.Don't get me wrong , this has served me brilliantly for years now , stable and doe's what I need well fast enough but time for an upgrade I'm thinking. Main thing that is stopping me is the damn cost of DDR4 , I refuse to pay these scandalous prices , takes the idea out of my pocket. I can accept CPU and motherboard prices but until DDR4 comes down to affordable , sensible prices I'm out of the boardgame.

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Pretty much the same boat as me (I did build an FX 8350 system a few years back).

yes.

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Originally Posted by Strawb77

yes.

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My yes could do with an upgrade too. :)

GPU for sure

Depends how badly I’m affected by the incoming CPU patches, but if this 30% hits me it could be an expensive year.

Just built new ryzen system couple months ago. Still in the process of building a loop and modding the case. However i did reuse old parts, so a new gpu and psu this year. Hopefully move up to 1440p monitor too

a new monitor and an M.2 drive

Everything apart from the case and power supply. Unless I win the upgrades, I'll still be on my 2011 i7 2600K system in 2019.

I think I'll get an extra 8GB of RAM, for a total of 16GB, because 8GB are a bit small now that I use VMs xD

Nothing at all. I am perfectly happy with my system which should see me ok for another couple of years yet. Not that there is anything worthwhile to justify the huge expense of changing platforms anyway. With the disgraceful price of memory these days it's just as well I don't need to make the jump to DDR4.

GPU that is up to VR standards, rather than my R9 380 which is a bit iffy.

new cpu , fx 8350 is a bit old now but still great ..

Most likely a new graphics card & maybe a larger SSD

Mine is the cpu. planning on getting a ryzen 1700 to replaced my 1600. i need the 2 extra cores. i need core work over the intels clock speeds. then im looking at WD m.2 drives.

Nothing.
Unless I win the lottery.

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Originally Posted by N3mesis

Desk and Chair! Not technically PC components, but very important components to PC use!

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+1 I need that too. Or my back will break very soon.

But my main plan this year is to go liquid. Oh, and change PSU for more quiet...

Monitor and new keyboard to use my Surface Book as my desktop. If prices come down a bit then I might look to build a new desktop. If not then I might never own a desktop again...

Unless prices on Video Cards and Ram come down, I'm not sure I will be doing any upgrades this year.

I would like to jump up to 4K but a 1080 Ti and 4K monitor could just be to expensive.

New monitor for myself so my wife can get her hands on my current monitor (her cheap HP screen has developed a fault after 4 years)

Also, really want a new SSD above 256GB as keep running out of storage for Steam games :)

I am already at 4K with 2 GTX 1080s...though my CPU platform, i7 3930K @4.2 ghz with 32GB or ram is getting dated. I wanted to upgrade while it still had some gaming chops left because my wife takes the old parts for her builds and enjoys gaming as much as do. Her i7 970 is getting long in the tooth these days. Point being after the disastrous bugs that just dropped apparently affecting even Intel's next gen 9 stuff, unless Ryzen + is insanely awesome I may hold off one more year for the next CPU product launches.

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Originally Posted by blokeinkent

Monitor unfortunately. I have to sit here for 3 or 4 minutes (although feels like 10) waving the mouse around looking like a plum trying to convince it to turn on.

Done me a good 10 years though. Don't want to scrimp on a replacement, however never seem to have enough coin in pocket :(

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It's probably a cap that's going bad.

Hopefully a R7 1700 (Or Zen+/2 equivalent) + 32gb ram, but ram prices are currently putting a stop to that and may do for the whole year.

As it is I use my PC for productivity and as much as my 3570k is getting a bit behind luckily I chucked 16gb ram in back when I built it so the push isn't too urgent.

I would love a new CPU,motherboard and RAM(I am still on Ivy Bridge),but it seems the newer AMD and Intel CPUs seem to prefer faster RAM(especially for the more CPU limited games I play),and as a result due to the ripoff prices of RAM,I am going to just keep my current CPU and motherboard for as long as possible.

I really hope China pushes its investigation into this blatant price fixing by the RAM companies.

Its a joke when any of the CPUs I am looking at cost less than the RAM I will be getting with the system.

Plus with the HDD companies,they have been more or less price fixing too for the last few years(apparently those temporary price increases after those floods years ago were not so temporary),and honestly can we have better than R9 290/GTX970/GTX1060/RX480/RX580 performance between £200 to £300?? This is the performance we have had in that price range for the last three to three and a half years.

I actually need a GPU that is up to 2018's standard. I am stuck with an AMD Radeon R7 200 series, I can't even play Unturned well. Sadly I am not going to be able to buy anything for a really long time. :(

Like Saracen, the meltdown and spectre exploits has put me off a new system build, but I could really do with a new monitor and GPU anyway, so I think I'll focus on those this year, maybe check out a new system core next year. Probably for the best anyway, given the prices of DDR4.

Looking at upgrading my 8gb ddr3 ram to 16gb ddr3 and maybe a new GPU. My Fx6300 is still chugging along nicely.

i am still using a 2600k w/ a Z68 mobo, gpu is: msi r9 390. Looking to upgrade it all :)

None. I build my computers with careful investment, lots of research, and a 5 year minimum, 7 year average service life in mind.

I built my computers 4-5 years ago at this point and don't forsee needing to upgrade for at least another 2-3 years, except maybe video card somewhere down the road. The 970s still have plenty of grunt for todays games though. :)

I'll probably have to upgrade my fileserver before my PC!

i7-4790k
24G ram
500G Samsung NVMe Pro drive (plus various other SSD and performance drives)
GTX 970
850W EVGA PSU

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Well I was contemplating a new systen build, given that my last one is about 10 years old, but frankly, given this "CPU flaw" fiasco, I'm very disinclined to buy into knowingly faulty hardware.

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Not only Intel. AMD has security problems, too, and so do ARM processors. So basically you either accept there's like a 0.00001% that you'd see this exploited in the wild and get new hardware or suffer with old hardware that has the flaw anyways. Windows is already patched against it and Mac and Linux are patching their OS's until chip manufacturers can figure out what to do.

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Originally Posted by DaMoot

Not only Intel. AMD has security problems, too, and so do ARM processors. So basically you either accept there's like a 0.00001% that you'd see this exploited in the wild and get new hardware or suffer with old hardware that has the flaw anyways. Windows is already patched against it and Mac and Linux are patching their OS's until chip manufacturers can figure out what to do.

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Yeah, I understand that. But the Windows patch doesn't help unless they've patched W7. Which I doubt. I'm certainly not going to W10, for reasons I've gone over many times.

My point is I don't need to upgrade. I can wait. So my antique processor still does what I need, and will get Linux patched as and when, and meantime I see NO appeal in actively buying a new CPU with a known flaw like this.

So, wait it is. If it takes a year, okay. 2 years? Well, I've managed so far. 10 years? By then I may be fully PC-retired and offline, apart from maybe a tablet like this one for a bit of web browsing and getting my HEXUS fix.

Windows 7 is under support so should have a fix. Whether it's already released in don't know.

Probably upgrade my SSD's for larger capacity ones, would also like to change my i7-5930K for an i7-6850K.

Also waiting to see what the HDR 144Hz 4K G-Sync monitors are like.

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Originally Posted by spacein_vader

Windows 7 is under support so should have a fix. Whether it's already released in don't know.

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Patch came with an early monthly security update yesterday. Firefox and Edge/IE11 also got updates for Spectre.

All of them except the case if I get a chance

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Yeah, I understand that. But the Windows patch doesn't help unless they've patched W7. Which I doubt. I'm certainly not going to W10, for reasons I've gone over many times.

My point is I don't need to upgrade. I can wait. So my antique processor still does what I need, and will get Linux patched as and when, and meantime I see NO appeal in actively buying a new CPU with a known flaw like this.

So, wait it is. If it takes a year, okay. 2 years? Well, I've managed so far. 10 years? By then I may be fully PC-retired and offline, apart from maybe a tablet like this one for a bit of web browsing and getting my HEXUS fix.

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Intel is the worst hit by far it seems.

Aye, they're trying to muddy the waters but AMD don't look to be suffering Meltdown at least.

So intel Meltdown and possible Spectre, AMD just possibly Spectre. Spectre needs software fixes anyway so i'd go with the newer architecture of Ryzen/Ryzen 2 if at all this year.

That sound about right?

I *really* need to replace my base components; CPU/RAM/Mobo. I'm on Sandy Bridge, and while the CPU is still a beast, the DDR3 and limited 6gbit SATA3 ports are a bit of a pain. I've been putting it off for ages though as it's a £600 upgrade for not a lot of performance, more to just..bring it all in line.

CPU, motherboard and RAM.
AM3 platform isn't offering what I see as attractive upgrade choices.
Budget option, G4560 on H110m.
If more money, perhaps Ryzen 3 around march when New Ryzen comes out. See what prices do then.

GPU
500g SSD
A set of studio monitors.

Not sure any of the grand companies really have to offer anything of proper value.

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

Intel is the worst hit by far it seems.

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Indeed it does.

But, and I say this with the caveat that all analogies only go so far .... suppose you were buying a new car, with a 6 cylinder engine. Two possible manufacturers, one with a design flaw meaning only 4 cylinders work, and the other where only 5 work.

Would you buy either, unless you had to? Would you accept a sort-of engine management patch?

Or would you wait until one, or both, had an engine that consistently ran on ALL cylinders?

That's all I'm saying. I don't need to buy right now, so I won't until one or both have fixed the actual problem, not come up with a gum-and-sellotape workaround.

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Originally Posted by adidan

Aye, they're trying to muddy the waters but AMD don't look to be suffering Meltdown at least.

So intel Meltdown and possible Spectre, AMD just possibly Spectre. Spectre needs software fixes anyway so i'd go with the newer architecture of Ryzen/Ryzen 2 if at all this year.

That sound about right?

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It does to me. With emphasis on "if at all this year".

I need a near silent PC, my current rig (5 years old) is still pretty good (Intel i7 3770k and 16GB DDR3) and I replaced the GPU with a Nvidia 1050ti last year. However it makes more noise than I can stand. I am not that confident in changing hardware myself (will do graphics card, memory and disks) but I may have to think about replacing my PSU and case fans to see if I can make a difference !!

I used to try and make my pc as quiet as possible and yet it was never quiet enough.

Buying some relatively good headphones, well good enough to block external noise anyway, solved my problems.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Indeed it does.

But, and I say this with the caveat that all analogies only go so far .... suppose you were buying a new car, with a 6 cylinder engine. Two possible manufacturers, one with a design flaw meaning only 4 cylinders work, and the other where only 5 work.

Would you buy either, unless you had to? Would you accept a sort-of engine management patch?

Or would you wait until one, or both, had an engine that consistently ran on ALL cylinders?

That's all I'm saying. I don't need to buy right now, so I won't until one or both have fixed the actual problem, not come up with a gum-and-sellotape workaround.

It does to me. With emphasis on "if at all this year".

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My main concern is the patch is only going to be tested on newer systems not older ones and there are indications it will actually effect older systems worse especially with games based on older engines.

At the same time the price fixing with RAM prices,etc is really starting to get off-putting.

For me I am seeing hobbies like hifi and photography being far better value long-term now.

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

My main concern is the patch is only going to be tested on newer systems not older ones and there are indications it will actually effect older systems worse especially with games based on older engines.

At the same time the price fixing with RAM prices,etc is really starting to get off-putting.

For me I am seeing hobbies like hifi and photography being far better value long-term now.

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Christ. If PCs have become worse value for money than Hifi we really are in the poo.

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

My main concern is the patch is only going to be tested on newer systems not older ones and there are indications it will actually effect older systems worse especially with games based on older engines.

At the same time the price fixing with RAM prices,etc is really starting to get off-putting.

For me I am seeing hobbies like hifi and photography being far better value long-term now.

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I take spacein_vader's point .... hifi and photography aren't cheap, at least as soon as you get beyond relatively basic kit.

But, spacein-vader, I'd stress Cat's "long term" value point. Buy a high-end lens, it'll likely last years, decades, even a lifetime. Similarly hifi. I bought, for instance, Stax Electrostatic headphones in , I don't know, late 70s or early 80s. And a Mitchell turntable about the sane time. I'm still using both now, some 35-40 years later.

The Apple IIe I bought about the same time, however .... well, I still have it and it still works, but it's a curio, close to a museum exhibit. In terms of giving me useful service, it ceased being competitive in the mid-80s, at the latest.

Yet, that Apple system cost me a LOT more than those Stax phones and Mitchell T/T put together while replacing the Mitchell and Stax today would set me back something like £5-6k.

The "long term" value is determined, in my opinion, more by useful lifetime than up-front cost.

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

My main concern is the patch is only going to be tested on newer systems not older ones and there are indications it will actually effect older systems worse especially with games based on older engines.

At the same time the price fixing with RAM prices,etc is really starting to get off-putting.

For me I am seeing hobbies like hifi and photography being far better value long-term now.

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Agreed. Partly for the reasons in my last post. Hifi and photography are, no doubt, expensive, but there's a difference between cost and value.

But for me, it's more than that. I used to get a buzz just from keeping up with technology. I wanted the latest, greatest, newest, fastest, because it was exciting. I spent a some weeks "playing with" (i.e. testing and previewing) HP's first colour laser printer, months before it was released. There were TWO in the country at the time, and one was sitting in my home office. I was using a CD burner when the hardware/software combo was £4k, and blank discs were £15 EACH.

I travelled the world, met with Bill Gates, had dinner with Lexmark's CEO, got invited to a party by IBM's CEO, had trips round code-locked dev labs at Apple, and with product managers to CEOs from Europe to the US to Asia.

It was a genuinely exciting time. I was right there, on the cutting edge, and often "in ths know" well before the public, of the digital revolution. By 'eck, was it fun.

But now, each new release (with a few exceptions) is just ho-hum. Which is why I don't go out of my way looking for review work and most of my writing is fiction. I get about as much buzz from a new graphics card as I do if Spear and Jackson release a new garden fork in new colours. All I really care about is whether it digs better, quicker or easier holes.

So while a PC is to me, as utilitarian as a garden tool, photo kit and hifi are about me enjoying music or expressing myself artistically. The value, to me, is inexpressibly higher.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

I take spacein_vader's point .... hifi and photography aren't cheap, at least as soon as you get beyond relatively basic kit.

But, spacein-vader, I'd stress Cat's "long term" value point. Buy a high-end lens, it'll likely last years, decades, even a lifetime. Similarly hifi. I bought, for instance, Stax Electrostatic headphones in , I don't know, late 70s or early 80s. And a Mitchell turntable about the sane time. I'm still using both now, some 35-40 years later.

The Apple IIe I bought about the same time, however .... well, I still have it and it still works, but it's a curio, close to a museum exhibit. In terms of giving me useful service, it ceased being competitive in the mid-80s, at the latest.

Yet, that Apple system cost me a LOT more than those Stax phones and Mitchell T/T put together while replacing the Mitchell and Stax today would set me back something like £5-6k.

The "long term" value is determined, in my opinion, more by useful lifetime than up-front cost.

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My point was more that both computing and Hifi (I know nothing of photography so didn't mention it,) seem to have head down an unpalatable path in the past few years. In Hifi's case I mean the "audiophile" snake oil that leads to 'directional' ethernet cables at £100+ a metre and other products that cannot measurably improve sound quality while regularly changing standards & interconnects ensures speedy obsolescence.

On the PC side performance improvements on the CPU side have been as minimal as Intel can get away with until Ryzen, nvidia managed to redefine performance classes of GPU up one price point & both RAM & storage markets show signs of price collusion. The same changing standards & interconnects for obsolescence abound here too.

In both markets the manufacturers are aided & abetted by complicit reviewers who dare not criticise too much lest they are cut off from new product launches. In Hifi they use terms like "sound feels fuller" rather than subject kit to double blind testing which would likely show no improvement. In the PC space selective use of benchmarks cherry picked to suit achieve similar purposes.

Any hobby that has adherents with a significant disposable income will likely have expensive landmines to avoid, but care and research can help avoid them.

As for complicit reviewers, I have no experience of hifi reviewing. I do have some in the photo sector, and a LOT in the computing sector. In 20 years, I've never been offered an inducement to slant a review, and while editors may occasionally change phrases, and also sonetimes trim length, I've never in thousands of articles had an editor change my basic conclusion.

The closest I've come is a time or two when a review has been highly negative, I've had editorial/legal meetings to ensure I can stand up negative comments. That is do I have extensive testing notes (yes), photo's of hardware issues (yes, again), records of benchmarks used (sure do) and results achieved (yup, in detail, and retested where controversial). So, while I've been asked if I can back up a negative review, every single one was then published.

No company has ever asked for favours or offered inducements, and no editor has ever amended the substance of or conclusions about, reviews.

My reviews have ALWAYS, without exception, reflected my genuine opinion, and nobody has even tried to change it.

What anybody does with copy I'm not involved in I've no idea but I will ssy this. Any reviewer is only as good as their reputation, and the PC press is quite a small group. Everybody tends to know most everybody else. If I got caught biasing a review just once, word would go editor to editor with the efficiency oc wildfire among dry brushwood and I could kiss my journalistic career goodbye as I watched it burn.

I get commissions because I turn in good copy, needing little or no eciting, of good quality, on brief, to length and by the deadline, EVERY TIME. Jerk editors about and they don't use you much, if at all.

GPU most likely :D
And i need 32GB 3400> RAM for my RIG...

I NEED A NEW GPU SOO BAD !! I want to play latest game at high settings without lag T_T my current GPU is not cutting it !!! Throw a ryzen processor in the process !! it will help alot !!

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Originally Posted by spacein_vader

Christ. If PCs have become worse value for money than Hifi we really are in the poo.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

I take spacein_vader's point .... hifi and photography aren't cheap, at least as soon as you get beyond relatively basic kit.

But, spacein-vader, I'd stress Cat's "long term" value point. Buy a high-end lens, it'll likely last years, decades, even a lifetime. Similarly hifi. I bought, for instance, Stax Electrostatic headphones in , I don't know, late 70s or early 80s. And a Mitchell turntable about the sane time. I'm still using both now, some 35-40 years later.

The Apple IIe I bought about the same time, however .... well, I still have it and it still works, but it's a curio, close to a museum exhibit. In terms of giving me useful service, it ceased being competitive in the mid-80s, at the latest.

Yet, that Apple system cost me a LOT more than those Stax phones and Mitchell T/T put together while replacing the Mitchell and Stax today would set me back something like £5-6k.

The "long term" value is determined, in my opinion, more by useful lifetime than up-front cost.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Agreed. Partly for the reasons in my last post. Hifi and photography are, no doubt, expensive, but there's a difference between cost and value.

But for me, it's more than that. I used to get a buzz just from keeping up with technology. I wanted the latest, greatest, newest, fastest, because it was exciting. I spent a some weeks "playing with" (i.e. testing and previewing) HP's first colour laser printer, months before it was released. There were TWO in the country at the time, and one was sitting in my home office. I was using a CD burner when the hardware/software combo was £4k, and blank discs were £15 EACH.

I travelled the world, met with Bill Gates, had dinner with Lexmark's CEO, got invited to a party by IBM's CEO, had trips round code-locked dev labs at Apple, and with product managers to CEOs from Europe to the US to Asia.

It was a genuinely exciting time. I was right there, on the cutting edge, and often "in ths know" well before the public, of the digital revolution. By 'eck, was it fun.

But now, each new release (with a few exceptions) is just ho-hum. Which is why I don't go out of my way looking for review work and most of my writing is fiction. I get about as much buzz from a new graphics card as I do if Spear and Jackson release a new garden fork in new colours. All I really care about is whether it digs better, quicker or easier holes.

So while a PC is to me, as utilitarian as a garden tool, photo kit and hifi are about me enjoying music or expressing myself artistically. The value, to me, is inexpressibly higher.

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Originally Posted by spacein_vader

My point was more that both computing and Hifi (I know nothing of photography so didn't mention it,) seem to have head down an unpalatable path in the past few years. In Hifi's case I mean the "audiophile" snake oil that leads to 'directional' ethernet cables at £100+ a metre and other products that cannot measurably improve sound quality while regularly changing standards & interconnects ensures speedy obsolescence.

On the PC side performance improvements on the CPU side have been as minimal as Intel can get away with until Ryzen, nvidia managed to redefine performance classes of GPU up one price point & both RAM & storage markets show signs of price collusion. The same changing standards & interconnects for obsolescence abound here too.

In both markets the manufacturers are aided & abetted by complicit reviewers who dare not criticise too much lest they are cut off from new product launches. In Hifi they use terms like "sound feels fuller" rather than subject kit to double blind testing which would likely show no improvement. In the PC space selective use of benchmarks cherry picked to suit achieve similar purposes.

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I don't consider myself a "hifi expert" but one of my family designed and built their own speakers,etc and I have gone to hifi shows and listened to some very expensive and esoteric stuff so I do have some knowledge in the area. Not everything in hifi is snake oil,since there is a design aspect which is based on engineering and research work which has been done in the past by people from the BBC and NHK,etc. Quite a few of the well known companies started from hobbyist roots or the said engineers,and in fact some of the speaker companies would do small orders for specific parts for fellow hobbyists(!). The issue with the snake oil only really started once many of the older hands left and either newer members of the family or younger people took over.

OTH,it also means it takes a lot to generally impress me,and when I look at certain designs,I can quickly tell whether they are actually trying to pose or actually trying to do something useful. This is why when I actually go to shows I try to go in without doing much research.

I remember recently going to a show and listening to a very high end headphone,amp and CD player combo which cost £120000. Except me(and my mate who tends to also be quite grounded when it comes to hifi),were not impressed. Yet,there was one relatively innocuous company manned by one bloke,who had a pair of phones which cost "only" £1500 and yet sounded better using the output from our own phones and a little battery operated amp which came with the headphone than loads of more expensive models,and it was the same when I listened to them again at another show. OFC,I probably wouldn't even spend that much on headphones. The same goes with speakers, and I have done all sorts of little tests yonks ago with cables,which seem to match up with what you expect(things like length and thickness make more of a difference than exotic rubbish),etc.

If anything I would argue Cambridge Audio pound for pound make great sound stuff,and are actually very hard to beat in terms of value for money!

But the Elephant in the room is that once you have a hifi you like the sound of,its something that can easily last 20 to 30 years,especially if you can service when things like capacitors,etc start going. Things like my Grado SR125 headphones have lasted me over a decade. A few years I downgraded to an older amp,which is 20 years old and still sounds perfectly fine. I use an SACD/CD player from 2004(IIRC).

This has been compounded by the biggest innovation in modern hifi in the last 20 years - digital amplification,which means you can have compact and powerful amplifiers built into speakers,at a relatively low cost,and the expansion of cheap computing devices which can do most of the processing. Then if you don't mind going secondhand you can some decent sounding kit for not much money - I was lucky to pick up a pair of PMC DB1 speakers for under £50. They are over a decade old,but they sound fantastic.

Hence,OFC many of these companies will try to find alternate revenue streams,so this is why a lot of this snake oil has started to grow in the last 20 years or so. They need to find ways for people to upgrade or buy new stuff from them.

To a lesser degree its the same with cameras when it comes to companies trying to get repeat purchases since most people only tend to change cameras and lenses,due to reliability issues,loss,breakage or when the system is underperforming in terms of functionality,image quality or even convenience. However,if the camera still does the job people will most likely still stick with it anyway,hence companies really can't do much to force you to upgrade.

Even digital camera bodies which have a much shorter lifespan than film ones,can easily last 4 to 5 years,or even longer. Lenses,OTH,have lifespans measured in decades. Even my D600 which I got when it was a current model,is years old,and the two most commonly used lenses I have on it are between 15 to 25 years old. Sure newer lenses,have better AF,and possibly better coatings but both of them have great flare resistance and do proper sunstars so I can live with it.

Now compare that with a smartphone or many computer parts. Why do you see me moan at high end smartphones on Hexus to the chagrin of many?? The lifespan is terribad on them,when compare to decentish prosumer compact and cheaper phone which will probably last as long in practice and still do a solid job. You are starting to see more and more snake oil and dubious marketing with phones too.

Things like monitors do last - my last one was 11 years old when I replaced it,but by comparison many PC parts don't last anywhere as long in terms of usefulness,since it is very easy to force changes in software which makes it obsolete or underperform quickly. This would not be an issue if it wasn't for the fact many PC parts seem to be going up massively in price way past inflation,etc,are obsolete within a few years and the performance jumps seem to be getting smaller and smaller at more popular tiers,since companies have quietly added more tiers to their product ranges.

Then OFC you have the fact that computers and smartphones don't hold their value very well either outside some situations like coin mining.

This means for me in terms of money spent over a certain time period(say a decade),I consider computers probably more expensive as a hobby than my other ones.

Maybe a new AMD cpu upgrade if the CPU can get 4.8 GHz on air and 5 GHz on water :P.

I also was thinking of a new PSU and a new pc case mid tower. So far the cases are less than amazing.

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Things like monitors do last - my last one was 11 years old when I replaced it,but by comparison many PC parts don't last anywhere as long in terms of usefulness,since it is very easy to force changes in software which makes it obsolete or underperform quickly ....

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And that, of course, is part of my refusal to upgrade to Win10, and why I refuse to "buy" Photoshop on a subscription.

The truth is that for most, or all, of the high-cost heavyweight software I use, including Office, Photoshop, CorelDraw, CoolEdit, Premiere, etc, the versions I already have will do everything I need. So, I don't and never have played the upgrade game getting everty new version as it comes out.

Do these new versions have improved features? Sure. Would some ofcthem be nice, useful? Sure .... sometimes. But, do I need them to do what I need to do. No. Hell, no. I could probably revert to Wordstar and DOS 3 and do all, or st least almost all, I need from a word processor.

Just about any decent spec machine in the last 10 years would be powerful enough for anything I need, with a margin left over. So, if my hardware and software purchases are defined by need, then I could probably stop buying hardware snd software completely, and just make do. I have enough parts, spare machines and redundancy, to probably keep that going until I need a zimmer frame more thasn a new PC.

Build a new rig.. Based on.. Intel/AMD ? Who knows right now. Interesting months ahead to help me decide.

Might change my RAM. Other than that, it's all good.

Nothing - poor parent... If I had the cash though new CPU/MB/RAM/SSD and monitor (might as well the replace the 8 year old case while I'm at it). Yeah only my GPU and one boot sized SSD is worth keeping...

Nothing - everything I have does what it needs to do quite adequately. Only exception will be if a component fails and either a direct replacement isn’t available or I can gain an improvement for relatively little extra expense (eg replace a hard drive with an SSD)

I'll be upgrading the full kit and kaboodle. A Fractal Design Define R6 with new components. Though I'll be waiting to see how the Ryzen 2 chips fair against the new Intel's on their upcoming updated chipset.

And I'll be going watercooled for the first time. Which is both exciting and scary :)

Already have an Ultrawide 34" LG monitor (3440x1440). Which is glorious. I'll never go back to a standard size monitor again.

Almost everything:

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 1500x,
GPU MSI GTX1050Ti 4GB DDR5,
MB Asus Prime X370-A,
Case LC Power Gaming 990B,
PSU Chieftec ELP-700S,
RAM Corsair DDR4 2x4GB @3200MHz CL16,
maybe SSD around 256GB
and of course something from Hexus Epic Giveaway 2017./2018.

I plan to buy the following in 2018:
Ryzen 3 2200G
B450 motherboard
16GB RAM (DDR4 3000 or faster)

That's just tentative. It will depend on whether RAM prices start dropping or not.

That would be a replacement for my Phenom II X6 1090T + Radeon HD 5750 desktop, which doesn't get much use, but I've been itching to upgrade it and I want to throw a bit of money at AMD.

Or I might end up buying a laptop with Ryzen 3 2300U or Ryzen 5 2500U if a 13" good one arrives.

I upgraded to a 1800x system recently so I think the only thing I will change this year would be better case fans.